Einstein on the Beach, Now Online

Exciting news from the world of digital archiving. If you never thought digital archiving would have exciting news, then check this out. The Leo Baeck Institute is bringing online a ton of its archives for free and public consumption. From the Melville House:

It is a mammoth collection — over 3.5 million pages — and a deeply important one, bringing together documents from 500 years of German Jewish history. What’s particularly laudable in this case is that they’ve digitized and made searchable not only the flashy items in the collection — the Einstein photos, the Mendelssohn archives, the Joseph Roth manuscripts — but all of it, even the records kept by ordinary German Jews. (In other words, exactly the kind of things the head of Ruskin College, Audrey Mullender, is actively Shred-X-ing over in Oxford.)

The opportunity to look into the past using digital tools is a great development for those wishing to research prelapsarian Germany and even just casually understand life there. Other notable appearances: Martin Buber, Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, composer Felix Mendelssohn, Chaim Weizmann.

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